Blackhawk Networks president on the future of prepaid

Starting out as a subsidiary of US supermarket giant Safeway, today Blackhawk Network offers prepaid cards across more than 600 brands and in 24 countries. President of Safeway since 2010, Talbott Roche initially joined the business back in 2001 as assistant VP back when it was still a specialty marketing division of Safeway. During an interview in the Finetics™ Studio by The Bancorp at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, she shares her insights on building out Blackhawk Network, B2B adoption of digital and the future of prepaid.

“Digital is something we’ve been passionate about for the past four or five years but it’s really coming into its own in 2015-16,” says Roche. “I think we all suspected that mobile wallets would be a lot further along than they are right now but we’ve had a lot of success – not just in that environment but maybe even more so in the in the B2B market.”

“Digital opened our eyes to the fact that gift cards [are] very popular in a retail environment where you can sell them direct to a consumer. But there’s also a $40bn addressable market in B2B where they’re used as rewards and incentives. That’s the market where digital is being embraced faster.”

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